Monday, September 5, 2011

The Kia we bought to replace the Camry Katie loved so much is gone. A friend has been saying he wants to buy it for a while, and we finally got together and made it happen.

It was just over a year ago that some dude pulled out of Bronzedale onto Waples Mill, right in front of Katie. She swerved to avoid him, took out a mailbox, and the airbags deployed. For the ten-year-old Camry, the cost of replacing the airbags made the car a writeoff.

So we did the research, and bought a Kia Forte EX in "Titanium" (dark gray). It was cute and peppy and had lots of safety features and Bluetooth and a USB port with iPod interface, and got much better mileage than the Camry. Katie loved it, even after I told her it was equipped with a new safety feature, MAS ("Mailbox Avoidance System").

Of course, she'd loved the Camry, too. She always allowed as how it wasn't an exciting car, but she'd learned to drive in it, had put a lot of miles on it, and I'm sure it represented freedom to her.

We got rid of the Kia as kind of an experiment: with me working from home, we've had at least one car sitting in the driveway 99.9% of the time. For those rare occasions when we really, really both need to go somewhere, we can coordinate or use Enterprise. So one car will work fine. At least, that's the theory. We'll see.

Anyway, it was surprisingly painful to watch the Kia drive away. At least we know it found a good home.

The entire last month has been pretty gut-wrenching, actually. August 2010 was difficult, with Katie desperate to leave for college but having a lot that had to get done, and we keep hearing echoes of that month, with kids heading back to school this year.

And of course, while it was the only plausible thing to do, we can't help but feel that heading to college was the step over the edge and onto the slope that led to November.

Poor Anita still being laid up hasn't helped. She's soldiering on, but is really, really tired of being stuck in a hospital bed! She's been faithful about not putting any weight on her right leg. Hopefully in the next few weeks, she'll get the green light to start hobbling on it.